Ok, am I the only one who is reading this and traumatized by it? I have no idea what it is about (the Onion in my view was only mildly funny when Bush was president, I can't imagine how bad it is now, but I haven't investigated), but it is bringing back flashbacks of my childhood! Jesus! This reminds me so much of my father, minus the physical part. One, he was the furtherest from a physical anything (thank God for the children), and two, if you are really good at creating an atmosphere of dread, well that'll about do it. No need for anything physical. The master manipulator he was and is!

Instapundit linked through to a thing about libertarianism the other day that sounded JUST like that.

Libertarians are, you see, fascists, because they want to force everyone else, to take away everyone else's right to chose the government they want to have... or something like that. I'm actually trying to summarize in a way that makes sense. Because I suppose it's true that if you want a major nanny state and government running everything and high taxes to pay for it, well then libertarians want to force you to have something else that you didn't want to have.

But it's just about as silly as this Onion thing. And obviously if that's the definition of fascist and imposing your will on others then a person could hardly argue that libertarians are fascists and someone, *anyone* else, is not.

But the Onion is satire, and this fellow explaining how libertarians are all about government force was serious.

"Libertarians believe that to impose freedom is not an imposition. For them, anything which can legitimately be described as 'freedom', may legitimately be imposed.

And the right to chose an unfree press?

"The Libertarian FAQ, for instance, says "America's free press is envied by freedom-starved people everywhere": implicitly, to allow any other press would be a denial of freedom. In this logic, imposition of a political ideology is a generous response to the suffering of others, who are 'starved' of it."